Highgate Cemetery

Outside the busy and packed center of London between the lovly 'Todor period' and 'mock Todoer' houses of the quite Highgate erea and bourder with the pretty Waterlow park lies the old Highgate Cemetery, alegedly a place for the dead but you will emidiatly reacon it full with life.
with a tipical London weather of gloomy, gray sky, driping rain or drizle, you will find your self wondring around goth and other style art work tomb stons and mausoleumes. witnesing as the shrubbery,ivy and moss slowly strangle the old stons and the names of those who laying six ft' under them with a hug of true love, slithering silently along the long the decades.
With this cenery and settings, with blackbird, ravens, robins and their orcsta's tunes while the squirls are skipping about around you, you can pay your respect to the late personas like Karl Marx, the father of the socialist philosophy, Duglas Adams, the author of 'The Hichhiker's guide to the Galaxy' series, William Friese-Greene, the cinema pioneer and other great deeds figures like Alexander Litvinenko the Russian Spy and more.
Heaven for photography lovers.
you can combine the tour along with tea in one of Highgate Hill's lovley caffe/tea shops or walking along the routes of the magnifisent Hapstead Heath Parkjust down the hill.

edmition is only:
3£ for the eastern cemetery (Marx,Duglas)
5£ only guided tours for the impressive Western Cemetery.
I would recomend to chack details before heand on: http://highgate-cemetery.org/

I hope my review was enriched and informative.
Cheers! Enjoy!!!

Omer Hannash

Highgate Cemetery, the western part, opened in 1839 as one of the 7 private cemeteries, which are now known as 'the Magnificent Seven'. By 1975 it wasn't financially viable anymore and the place became run down and overgrown. However, in 1981 the 'Friends of Highgate Cemetery' took over the place and started restauring the place.

The Eastern cemetery was kept open the whole time and never really fell into disarray. However, it is less spectacular than its older, western cousin. (Karl Marx is burried on the Eastern cemetery)

While the Eastern cemetery is open to the public at all times, the western one can only be visited on guided tours. You should check the website to see when they are exactly. Make sure to show up on time because they will only take a handfull of people on each tour and no amount of pleading is going to change their mind.

Your guide, who is a volunteer, will show you only a fraction of the cemetery, but you will get a feel of the grandeur of the place. The tour will definately include the magnificent Egyptian Avenue and will lake exactly 1 hour.

You pay 5 pounds for the tour and you are allowed to take photographs. Just try to keep up with the guide. The Eastern cemetery charges 3 pounds entrance fee.

Take the tube to Archway station to get there and then walk up the hill and through Waterlow Park to the Swain's Lane exit. The cemeteries are right next to it.

In the 1800's London had experienced so much growth that their local cemeteries were becoming over-full. To remedy this problem, the city had 7 new cemeteries built in a ring around the outside of the city. Highgate is the most famous of these.

There are two sides: the older West side and the newer East side. West side is available to see through guided tours only (£5) and this is where we went. East side has the grave of Karl Marx and is only £3 to enter.

The tour was very informative. The guide told us a lot about the history of the cemetery and some of its more noteworthy grave sites. In the 1800s this would have been a beautiful park, but now its all overgrown and pretty creepy. Really cool!!

Make sure you get there early as the tours are limited to 12 people, once an hour, and end at 4.

Definitely a bit off the beaten path but really worth it. Maybe you'll even see the Highgate Vampire (wiki it, its pretty funny... wizard duels and everything... haha)!

Not much interested in a place that celebrates dead people I first went there in 1999 on the advice of my cousin, just because and fell in love with the space.  Go to the side of the cemetry that  doesn't house Carl Marx.  Small tours of only 12 people are taken hourly by volunteers as the cemetry is all overgrown and is hazardous to those not knowing their way around.  Depending on who takes you around you will learn about why the monuments on the graves are so.  There is a delightful hound dog, carved in stone, that rests on his master's burial site.  Learn the significance of the artifacts placed by the Victorians on the graves.  It is a place of reflection, wild and overgrown, the Jewish section has an enormous cedar tree in the centre.   The tour will take about an hour and cost about 6 pounds.